Year after year, Brazilian women are having fewer children. In 2023, the country saw the number of births fall for the fifth consecutive year. There were 2.52 million births, a 0.7% reduction compared to 2022.
This amount is 12% lower than the average number of births in the five years prior to the covid-19 pandemic, that is, 2015 to 2019 (2.87 million).
The information is part of the Civil Registry Statistics survey, released this Friday (16) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The institute gathered the information from notaries spread across the country.
The total number of birth registrations reached 2.6 million in 2023, but the IBGE clarifies that 2.9% of them (75 thousand) are of people born in previous years but registered only in 2023.
The IBGE also presented a historical series starting in 1974 with numbers of births that occurred and were registered in the year, however excluding data where the mother’s residence is unknown or abroad. In this series, the 2023 figure (2.518 million) is the lowest since 1976 (2.467 million).
Despite the downward trend in the number of births, Klivia Brayner de Oliveira, manager of the Civil Registry Survey, cautions that the finding of it being the lowest figure in the series in nearly 50 years must take under-registration into account, which was higher in the past.
“In many places, there were births and deaths that were not registered,” she says, emphasizing that currently, the data is very close to reality.
For the researcher, the decrease in the number of births in the country is related to factors such as the costs of raising children, the spread of contraceptive methods, including among low-income people, and other priorities for women, such as work and education.
“Women delaying the desire to have children, giving priority to studies,” she cites.
“As age advances, you delay this decision to have children, and the chance of having more children also diminishes,” completes the IBGE analyst.
IBGE researcher Cintia Simões Agostinho adds that the drop in births is not a phenomenon unique to Brazil. “In developed countries, developing countries, it is a well-known phenomenon,” she points out.
Mothers’ Age
The survey shows that Brazilian mothers are deciding to have children at a more advanced age. In 2003, 20.9% of births were from women up to 19 years old, a percentage that fell to 11.8% in 2023.
When the woman is 30 years or older, the proportions rose from 23.9% to 39% over the period. Specifically among mothers aged 40 or older, the figure doubled, from 2.1% to 4.3%. In 2023, there were 109 thousand births from mothers in this age group.
When analyzed by regions, the North and Northeast show the highest shares of women up to 19 years who had children in 2023, at 18.7% and 14.3%, respectively. In the South, the figure was 8.8%.
On the other hand, while the North had 29.3% of 2023 births from mothers aged 30 or older, this reached 42.9% in the Southeast.
– Federative units with the highest proportion of births from mothers up to 19 years in 2023:
• Acre: 21.4%
• Amazonas: 20.5%
• Pará: 19.2%
• Maranhão: 18.9%
• Roraima: 17.9%
• Amapá: 17.8%
– Federative units with the highest proportion of births from mothers aged 30 or older in 2023:
• Distrito Federal: 49.4%
• Rio Grande do Sul: 44.3%
• São Paulo: 44.3%
• Santa Catarina: 42.9%
• Minas Gerais: 42.8%
For researcher Klivia de Oliveira, the reason women have children at younger ages in the North and Northeast relates to cultural factors and precarious situations, such as limited access to health services for guidance on contraceptive methods, as well as lack of prospects.
“Economically disadvantaged women, facing more difficulties, tend to have more children,” she observes.
Deaths
The Civil Registry Statistics survey shows that Brazil recorded 1.43 million deaths in 2023. It is the second consecutive year of declining deaths. In 2022, there was a 15.8% reduction from the previous year, which was marked by the pandemic. From 2022 to 2023, the drop was 5% (75.2 thousand).
In addition to data from notaries, the IBGE also draws on the Mortality Information System from the Ministry of Health to reach the total number of deaths. This system includes information on people who passed through health facilities. Without it, “we wouldn’t capture the cause of death,” explains Klivia de Oliveira.
According to the institute, “the data indicate that much of the decline in deaths in 2023 is related to the end of the coronavirus pandemic.” There was a reduction of 55.7 thousand deaths from “diseases by virus of unspecified location,” a category that includes covid-19.
In 2023, the sex ratio was 121.2 male deaths for every 100 female deaths. Another key figure is that 71% of deaths were among people aged 60 or older.
Causes
More than nine out of every ten deaths in 2023 were due to natural causes, according to the IBGE. Deaths from unnatural causes, such as falls, homicides, accidents, suicides, and drownings, accounted for 7% of total deaths. The remaining 2.3% had unknown causes.
Among unnatural causes, there were on average 499 male deaths for every 100 female deaths. In the 20- to 24-year age group, this ratio reached its widest gap between sexes, with 872 male deaths for every 100 female deaths.
Source: Agência Brasil